


We Heard the Melody

by magiccakewoman



Category: Mother 1 | EarthBound Zero | EarthBound Beginnings
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-02 22:12:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16795753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magiccakewoman/pseuds/magiccakewoman
Summary: Ninten's first encounters with Magicant and Lloyd.





	We Heard the Melody

Lloyd found himself huddled in a trash can, motionless and shivering, with his long, dusty red sweatshirt stretched over his knees. As the boy heard footsteps approaching, he was torn between looking out to see who it could possibly be and continuing to hide. But fear always won in the world, even in- no, especially in Twinkle Elementary, it seemed to Lloyd. Even in the private thoughts and bold statements of nerdy little kids who happened to have just stolen explosives.

As Ninten looked out on the rooftop, he took in the chill wind, the view from so high up, the small town of Merrysville, the rocky plains beyond it, the huge presence of Mt. Itoi looming off in the distance. Ninten walked over to the trash can and opened the lid. Well. There you are. The lost one you've been looking for.

  


"How are you doing that?" asked Lloyd in the lunchroom at school, In the center was a pile of bent spoons- the kind of ruse that could fool anyone willing to pay money to see a psychic before psychic powers existed. And yet, they lent their own aura of otherworldliness to the scene. "See," said Ninten, "you have to bend the spoon with your hands a bit before, and metal fatigue does all the rest of the work," and as he loosened his two fingers' grip on the handle, it fell limp.

"Oh..." It was so obvious, and yet Lloyd felt a bit stupid that a small part in the corner of his brain believed that those sort of tricks might be real; the same part that darkly entertained the idea that the moon landing had been faked. "Yeah," said Ninten, shaking his head slightly, "There's really nothing to it." He looked back at the spoon, and, concentrating intently, started to lift his fingers completely. But it didn't drop at all, only hung still in the air, defying gravity and logic and the people who thought he was totally unremarkable.

  


"And then I showed up here, looking for clues. About my great-grandparents, about myself. I guess I just need another guy reckless enough to follow me," Ninten said, grabbing one sandwich out of two from his backpack. Ninten shrugged, suddenly with an unreadable expression on his face as he glanced out at the mountain's sillhouette with a far-off look in his eyes. The smile and the pain showed themselves in his eyes, and that moment it seemed almost as if he really was was a visitor from another world... or really had just come back from one, anyway. 

"Follow you... ...Like, like friends," Lloyd asked hesitantly, suspiciously. The sun glinted off the thin frames of his glasses and his wispy grey hair." "Haha, when you put it that way, it sounds kind of weird, doesn't it?" "More than weird. Crazy. Haven't you heard what they say about me?" How sincere Ninten really was might have been more frightening than anything. Because at least petty cruelty was familiar, but this warmth... it was so new. 

  


The two boys had found themselves drawn to the strange stone marked "XX," heard the pulsing waves of PSI where it stood. Indistinct humming, half-murmured words, the sound of a garbled yet pleasant dream could be felt. Though otherworldly, the sense was calming, like reverberations in water. Though only when Ninten consciously used telepathy could he understand what it was asking.

Ninten did not have an answer, but he knew the question. "...That which was left behind by the ship that soared the heavens." The old diary felt like some kind of spellbook in his hands. That boy, Lloyd thought, was _amazing,_ and yet he didn't seem to truly know.

The two walked through Magicant, damp with the chill of old memory. This imaginary land had been somehow wrought by a sort of painful nostalgia for a place and time that could never have existed, that could only be long gone. "Queen Mary" ruled there, an eternal woman, a ghost of the truth, a vessel for Maria's bittersweet memories reflected against celadon walls, of linked minds and broken hearts, and a long grief for an alien son repeating seemingly forever...

  


The horizon line above the pink clouds shimmered as if with heat, but the blue wind was as cool and still as marble. It was the feeling of a strange new summer, with a chill wind to the budding air. The two boys both knew that they had trespassed, that they had existed inside a restless dream... but that the frightening familiarity of these secrets fascinated them like nothing else. The two looked above into the milky cataract clouds, hand in hand.

They had already faced death and yet returned, with singed holes straight through their sneakers and a resonating melody. They carried the vaporous air with them, it had seeped into their skin, was held as inspiration in their electric minds, as the ground shifted ever slowly, as the stars crackle with light, all together. They had now a fragment of a melody, to hold close until it could be resolved.


End file.
